By MaryAnn Spoto
The Star-Ledger
July 28, 2011
Gov. Chris Christie is the latest of several New Jersey governors to wind up in the hospital:
• Jon Corzine nearly died in a high-speed car accident on the Garden State Parkway in Atlantic County on April 12, 2007 as he was being chauffeured by his state police driver in between appearances. Hospitalized for 18 days, Corzine broke his left femur in two places and broke his breastbone, collarbone and 12 ribs.
• James E. McGreevey broke his left thigh bone while walking on a Cape May beach at a spot known locally as Poverty Beach on Feb. 1, 2002. He said he tumbled off a 4-foot-high ridge in the sand.
• Christie Whitman had a number of accidents and hospitalizations while in office. Her first hospitalization while in office was on Nov. 10, 1995, when she underwent surgery to remove a benign ovarian cyst. She had shoulder surgery to repair a damaged rotator cuff in February 1996. Five months later, she was diagnosed with Lyme disease or some similar tick-borne illness. In October 1996, she was off her feet for four days to relieve the pain from a slightly herniated disc. She underwent an emergency appendectomy on Nov. 13, 1998. A year later, she broke her right leg while skiing in the Swiss Alps. And in Aug. 26 , 2000, she took a header off a mountain bike in California’s Napa Valley. She suffered a chipped bone in her right middle finger and a cut to her upper lip requiring six stitches to close.
• Three months after taking the reins of the state in 1982, Thomas H. Kean suffered a herniated disc in his back that kept him in Saint (CQ) Barnabas Medical Center for three weeks. He governed from his hospital bed during that time.